As the newest member of The Real Housewives of New York City, this model mom has learned the hard way about the blessings and curses of "surreality" TV.

In this day and age, only a bone-through-the-nose Upper Amazon Basin tribesman wouldn't recognize that an invitation to star in a reality show is nothing more than an invitation to play roulette with one's reputation — not to mention sanity.

The Real Housewives of New York City was last year's surprise hit on Bravo, calling all rubberneckers who just couldn't take their eyes off the weekly five-SUV collision of female ego and malice aforethought. In an effort to keep estrogen levels comfortably spiky in the show's second season, Bravo set about to induct yet a sixth housewife into this status-obsessive sorority.

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What kind of person would submit to the relentless hazing promised by the likes of Bethenny, LuAnn, Ramona, Alex, and Jill? "Kelly Bensimon is a real socialite" is how Bethenny Frankel, the personal chef, introduces the newest addition to the show.

A model and author of coffee-table books, an ex-wife of fashion photographer Gilles Bensimon, a jewelry designer, and a columnist in local magazines who gigged for a year covering parties for the New York Post's now defunct weekly Page Six Magazine, Kelly, 41, is an organically grown member of what Bethenny outsiderishly labels "the fabulosity crowd." Her arrival seemed to signal to other cast members that they had fallen short in some vague, undefined way. Kelly, with naive pride, recalls how a Bravo executive said that her presence "rais[ed] the bar a little bit," oblivious to the role it quite probably plays in the public stoning she ultimately endures from her costars.

The first episode aired amid the manic polka of fashion shows known in New York City as Fashion Week. Kelly was now telling her friends, "There's always Canada." (As if there could be any refuge from the bloopers of her life now served up for the world to review and ridicule.) Regrets? She's had a few.

Now seated on what she calls her Barbie couch at her loft downtown, lipstick pink and buxom with pillows made from Hermès scarves that would otherwise be languishing in a drawer (an example, she says, of how she stays "green"), Kelly is explaining why she did the show. "I wanted to put my name up there," she says. "I was like, it's not enough for New York to know me. I wanted the rest of America to know me. I have a great life. I have a lot of fun. I've done amazing books." Those would be her fashionably executed The Bikini Book, In the Spirit of the Hamptons, and American Style. But she's also got some owl necklaces to promote, and reality TV looked to be her secret passageway to fame and a dreamed-of talk show, perhaps.

And though Kelly professes to be a watcher of Rock of Love ("awesome!" she calls it) and Tool Academy ("insaaane"), she claims she purposely didn't sample any previous Real Housewives episodes. Not out of narcissism or lack of curiosity about who else was going to be sharing the pixels. Rather, she simply wanted to come off as spontaneous.

But sound bites surgically excised from context can play a bit smug. "I live a luxurious life," she announces during an episode of the show, her voice surprisingly quarterback husky, defining luxury as "[being] able to buy beautiful things" — not the most recession- (or armchair-critic-) proof aperçu as she bops from party to party in the pay-to-play Hamptons. ("I feel like I was born to live here," she says.)

Kelly inadvertently reveals that she thought she could game the reality-TV-show formula and avoid the fourth-grade sniping. "It was like Type-A-ville, a very toxic environment, and, you know, I'm from Rockford, Illinois." She says this often. Of course she is down-to-earth: She drives a Dodge Ram and says so — numerous times.

She compares The Real Housewives of New York City to "Mean Girls for the over-40s." The plan was clearly to behave, not mouth off, not meet any of the women for cocktails. The less vino, the less uncomfortable veritas. Not that reality TV is truly reality TV. "The moment there's a camera, it becomes surreality TV," Kelly wisely observes. Problem is, her avoidance translates as disdain as she speeds through appointments with the women between parties for Dior Beauty and Zac Posen's fashion show, ultimately proving her incapable of policing the running commentary behind her back.

On episode 4, Kelly invites fashion executive Ramona Singer to architect Richard Meier's model museum in Queens, where they browse such miniatures of his buildings as the Getty Center, mainly because she says she's a friend of Mr. Meier's. Ramona had done her homework on Meier the modernist. "[Kelly] really didn't seem to know much about him at all, which I was shocked about," says Ramona after the field trip. Smarting from the poison dart, Kelly offers later, "It's not my job to educate Ramona or compete with her."

On the periphery of this interview sits an attractive young man flipping through the newspaper. A second personal assistant? No, even if "that's what she thinks too sometimes," he jokes. This is Kelly's 30-year-old venture-capitalist boyfriend, whom she managed to conceal from the show. "Anyone who would ever be on a reality show with me would not be dating me in real life," she says.

A week after the interview, Kelly surrendered to police after she allegedly gave her beau a black eye. (Kelly's lawyer has called the charges "unfounded.") He told reporters he blamed this incident in part on the pressures of the show. Says Kelly now, "One of the worst things about putting yourself out there is exposing yourself to situations you never dreamed would be a reality."

There is no joy in Type-A-ville: Bethenny traces her dislike of Kelly to a party where she claims Kelly flirted with her then-boyfriend. This is news to Kelly, who explains from the Barbie couch that Bethenny just "didn't make an impact. I don't know who she is and I don't care. And am I going to hire her as a chef? No. She's not good!" Still, graciously, after Bethenny accuses her of looking past her at a party (a tendency documented by the cameras) — and Kelly takes her aside to bluntly explain the I'm-up-here-you're-down-there hierarchy of the jungle — she plugs Bethenny's chef services in her newspaper column. By the end of the season, "she made up with me," says Kelly.

"There's an inauthenticity to Kelly that I just instinctively sense," Bethenny remarks in an early episode. "Is Bethenny a socialite?" asks Kelly now. "No. Will she ever sit next to Lauren duPont? No. Is she best friends with Aerin Lauder? No. Am I? No. Do I care? No. Does she? Oh, absolutely. She's not authentic. All she does is sit there and cry all the time. I'm like, you're crying about guys? And shut up. Honestly, if being inauthentic means graduating from Columbia University, writing three books, starting two magazines, bearing two children [daughters Sea, 10, and Teddy, 8], being the ambassador for wool, running a marathon for charity — if that's inauthentic? Tell me what authentic is."

Kelly insists she's prepared to be loathed. When she was putting together The Bikini Book, "I read that in the '50s, women were going to be handcuffed for wearing a bikini," she says. "I thought to myself, That's why the bikini was so successful. During a recession, we need to be entertained. I don't want to see how much Tide women use."

When Kelly interviews people, her favorite question to ask is "If you could be somebody else, who would it be?" Given the chance to answer this herself, she insists, "It would be me. Every single day. With criticism, without criticism. Just to be me. Because what's so bad about that?"